Windows 7 Tops Vista in Performance

PC Labs finds that Windows 7 boots and operates faster than Vista on the same machine.

There have been some media reports, much of them instigated by utility developer Iolo, that claim Windows 7 boots up more slowly than Vista. In PCMag.com's testing, however, the new OS starts up significantly faster than Vista on the same machine. And it's not just faster in boot time, but on a number of other benchmarks we ran, including video encoding, the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, Geekbench, and PCMark Vantage. The only area in which the new OS didn't show at least a little improvement was in shutdown speed.

We tested on clean installations of 64-bit Windows 7 and Vista on the same machine: a Dell Studio 14z running a 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3GB of DDR3 RAM and Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics. I chose a 64-bit system because most of the systems we've tested and recommended in the past year (except netbooks) have shipped with 64-bit Windows.

For startup comparison, I stopped the timer when the desktop and all interface elements appeared and the Start menu became operational. In this test, Windows 7 improved on Vista by nearly 14 percent. Shutdown time remained a snappy 10 seconds for both operating systems on this machine. (In tests on 32-bit systems, shutdown speed increased slightly.) Startup is, of course, far more important than shut down for most users.

For another real-world, task-based test, I timed video encoding in Windows Live Movie Maker on both operating systems. I used the same two-minute movie content (made of clips and images I created, complete with titles and transitions), and had the program convert it to 480p (720 by 480 at 3 Mbps). Windows 7 posted a 12 percent improvement on this test, reducing the time it took from 1 minute and 31 seconds to 1 and 20 seconds.

I also compared JavaScript performance using the well-regarded SunSpider benchmark and the open-source Firefox 3.5. I could have compared using the browsers native to Vista and Windows 7, Internet Explorer 7 and 8, respectively, but then it would be difficult to tell how much the results would be affected by the fact that, relatively speaking, IE7 is a dog. Choosing Firefox 3.5 on both systems leveled the playing field. The results showed a nearly 14 percent improvement in browsing speeds in Windows 7 over Vista.

Geekbench, from Primate Labs, runs a series of geeky tests like prime number, Mandelbrot, blowfish encryption, text compression, image sharpen and blur, and memory stream test. The subtests comprise both single- and multithreaded applications. These tests are hardware intensive so I wouldn't expect to see vast differences here, but Primate Labs has used this test to compare OSes in the past (they pitted Leopard against Snow Leopard, for example), so I thought it would be an interesting tool for this OS faceoff, too. In the end, Windows 7 only improved performance by half a percent on this test. That's not much, but it does at least show that the new OS doesn't slow down these processes.

PCMark Vantage runs through actions like viewing and editing photos, video, and music, as well as gaming, communications, productivity, and security operations. I had previously run the benchmark on a 2-GHz dual-core Dell XPS M1330 laptop, and Windows 7 scored 4,107 compared with Vista's 3,567 (a higher result is better). This 15 percent improvement over Vista was duplicated in my present tests on the 2.4GHz laptopan impressive gain.

Window 7 vs. Windows Vista

Dell Laptop with 3GB DDR3 RAM

Windows Vista, 64-bit

Windows 7, 64-bit

Percent Improvement

Startup (in seconds)

52.7

45.5

13.7

Shutdown (in seconds)

10

10

0

Video rendering (in minutes:seconds)

1:31

1:20

12.1

SunSpider (Firefox 3.5)

1,437

1,238

13.8

Geekbench 2.1

2,778

2,792

0.5

PCMark Vantage

3,850

4,418

14.8

In a new OS with a lot of new features, it's impressive that Microsoft has trimmed down and sped up the code. Shutdown and Geekbench aside, most of the tests showed about a 14 percent improvementa pretty nice boost. Of course, your mileage will most definitely vary. I performed several of my tests on other laptops as well, including 32-bit systems, and got roughly similar results. Where there were differences, they were generally in Windows 7's favor. Overall, I'm confident that most users will experience noticeable performance improvement if they upgrade from Vista.

In the past, Microsoft operated under the assumption that PCs will continually get faster and more powerful, so it was less concerned about growing and slowing the code. Windows 7 is different. Despite the abundance of new user interface, convenience, and networking features added in Windows 7, performance has actually been improved.

Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine’s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine’s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services (pretty much the progenitor of Web 2.0) for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine’s Solutions section, which in those days covered programming techniques as well as tips on using popular office software. Most recently he covered Web...
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